When the customs and immigration officer stamped my passport and gave us permission to board our ship, I
thumbed through the pages looking for the stamp from my previous trip to the small island nation of Mauritius. There it was, the same oval shape with a small silhouette of the doomed Dodo bird at the top. The only difference, that stamp was dated exactly 3 years and 10 days earlier. Three yours prior, our ship left the shipyard in Singapore bound for Brazil. Following a successful drilling campaign in Brazil we were now heading back to the Far East.My last time here I was departing a vessel heading west and this time joining the same vessel heading east. A few days after departing the ship in 2012 I would get married and a few days after joining in 2015 celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary 9 time zones apart.
Here is a throw back to the post from what little I did get to see of the island three years ago and a few of my thoughts.
After 18 days sailing and over one month onboard seeing the small island nation of Mauritius was a welcome sight.
“The island of Mauritius was unknown and uninhabited before its first recorded visit, by Arab sailors during the Middle Ages who named it Dina Arobi. In 1507 Portuguese sailors visited the uninhabited island and established a visiting base. Portuguese navigator Diogo Fernandes Pereira was probably the first European to land on the island at around 1511. The island appears with a Portuguese name ‘Cirne’ on early Portuguese maps, probably because of the presence of the dodo, a flightless bird which was found in great numbers at that time. The Portuguese did not stay long as they were not interested in these islands.”
From 1638 to 1710 the Dutch made attempts to colonize the island but failed due to sickness and frequent typhoons. They did succeed in decimating the Dodo bird before moving on. The…
View original post 424 more words
La Buena Vida 
Leave a Reply